Monday, April 25, 2011

We're currently calling for submissions for our next two volumes of Birdbrain Collective, and we'd love to have you on board. After the popularity of the first 3 issues, we're very excited to see what happens next.

For those of you new to the Birdbrain mailing list, here is the deal- each issue has a theme. So far, our themes have been 'childhood', 'dreams', and 'recycling'. You are encouraged to interpret these themes however you want. We adore the non-literal and the ridiculous, we just want to give you a starting point, an idea, and for you to create a response you're excited about.

What form your response takes is entirely up to you. Drawings, comics, poetry, prose, collage, photography, really anything that fits the format. This is a zine, so a few basic rules apply:

1) Must be photo-copy friendly. This means black & white or grayscale.2) Generally, submissions should be 1-4 pages long. As we get a better sense for what everyone wants to do, there's usually some space for an extra page or two if someone wants it.3) Each page is roughly 5.5" x 8.5", so your responses must be able to fit those dimensions. We do all the formatting, so don't worry if it's larger, just so long as the proportions work. If you'd like to do something across two pages (double page spread) we can usually make that work too, so let us know. You will receive copies of each volume you participate in.*

Birdbrain Collective has been a lot of fun for us to make, and we couldn't have done any of it without all the AMAZING submissions we receive, and I want to thank everyone that has submitted so far.

OK, here are the new themes:

BBC #4 - "If I Were A Superhero / If I Were A Supervillain"This is your chance to strut your crime fighting/ diabolical / superpowered stuff.What amazing abilities would you have? What would you do with that power?Do you have an arch nemesis? A vendetta? How's your moral compass?The goal is to make a separate volume of Superheroes and Supervillains, so either choose one, or go nuts and do both!

BBC#5 - "Three Wishes"You all know the story. You're in the desert, or at a garage sale, and you find a very special lamp. A couple good rubs and POOF there's a genie, and the genie is offering you 3 wishes. What, if anything, do you do with them?You're under no obligation to do anything 'genie' related. This isn't about magic or fairy tales necessarily, but about being given 3 chances to do absolutely anything you can imagine.Remember, a wish granted is never as simple as you think.

So there you have it! We hope you'll participate in this next round of zines. If you're interested, send us an email.

We'll be posting this call for submissions on Facebook as well, so sorry if you get it twice. If you know someone that might want to participate, feel free to forward them this email.

Speaking of the internet, you may or may not know that BIRDBRAIN Press has a blog. It has not been updated in a very long time (we're not born bloggers), but we're getting our act together. so keep an eye out for updates as we get closer to releasing our next round of zines, prints, and other fun stuff.

Thanks! Hope to hear from you all soon.

- BIRDBRAIN Press

*Everyone that participated in issues 1-3 that are not local to SLC have had to wait a LONG time to get their copies. All I can say is there were technical difficulties. And then, as sometimes happens, stuff came up and Birdbrain Press had to take a backseat to the far less enjoyable matters of life. To those of you that got stiffed, I'm really sorry. But two very important points-1) All your backlogged zines are on the way! We are flooding the post office with packages.2) We have solved those technical difficulties, so the objectionable delay won't happen again.